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Saturday, July 5, 2014

Final Fantasy XV: Can Square Enix Salvage This Situation?

As most of you are probably well aware,
Final Fantasy XV was first announced back in 2006 alongside of Final
Fantasy XIII. At the time it was called Final Fantasy Versus XIII
and was intended to be a parallel world using only terms and some
amount of mythology from Final Fantasy XIII. Of course, then the
game just vanished into the endless oblivion of development hell. Or
more like it was Square Enix pushing it aside to work on other
projects that should never have existed, like pretty much every Final
Fantasy XIII game after the first one and the original version of
Final Fantasy XIV.

Final Fantasy XV has the potential to be the game that Final Fantasy XIII should have been.

So after all these years, there is one
question I had on my mind that I've been thinking about for some
time. At this point, is Final Fantasy XV doomed to be a failure? At
present, I kind of worry that it will be. Even if it ends up being
an insanely fun game that was worth the wait, it will be forever
tarnished by the bad reputation it is burdened with, combined with
Square Enix constantly saying “please wait a little longer, please
keep waiting patiently”. In short, Final Fantasy XV is suffering
from what I like to call Duke Nukem Forever syndrome.

What is that? Duke Nukem Forever
syndrome is a condition where no matter what the developers do, the
game will never live up to the expectations of gamers. Unless the
game somehow holds the cure for cancer or some other kind of miracle,
that game is almost inevitably doomed to receive terrible review
scores across the board and be thrown into $5 or less bargain bins
with the rest of the garbage software that is forgotten within weeks.

So what can Final Fantasy XV do to
avoid this fate? Hard to say, but Square Enix has a serious uphill
battle ahead of them. A lot of people have just simply lost interest
in this game, seeing it as nothing more than vaporware sitting next
to The Last Guardian in the realm of non-existent games. Square Enix
needs to get that interest back. They need to start promoting this
game heavily to the point that it generates a massive hype train.
But more than that, they need to make sure to deliver on all the
things they say will be in the game.

On a conceptual level, Final Fantasy XV
sounds awesome. Interactive cutscenes, an overworld, intense action
combat that makes Kingdom Hearts look easy, and all sorts of things.
It can be a highly successful game, but Square Enix is going to have
to kick development into overdrive to have any hope of pulling this
off. Most importantly, Square Enix must never allow something like
this to happen again. Not only can it hurt the reputation of a game,
it can also hurt the company itself. Despite some of the
questionable decisions they've made in the past, Square Enix is
capable of making incredible games and I would hate to see them go
down in flames. Especially since Kingdom Hearts III is still in
development.